


I Bless You: More Life

by fandomfan



Category: Black Sails
Genre: FlintHamilton, Happily Reunited Truest Loves, M/M, Post-Finale, Post-Series, Resurrection Day fic, that oar is looking mightily like a shovel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 05:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14181327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomfan/pseuds/fandomfan
Summary: In which Thomas and James discuss themes of resurrection and reunion.





	I Bless You: More Life

**Author's Note:**

> With Thomas Hamilton Resurrection Day (which is also my birthday) upon us, I asked for related prompts on Tumblr.
> 
> Here are the two I got (both anonymous) that I combined into this story:  
>  **Thomas tells James about the time he almost died as a child**  
>  and  
>  **Modern AU, Thomas wakes up from a coma**
> 
> I didn't go modern AU for this, but I did stick with the suggested themes. And I shamelessly stole Tony Kushner's beautiful words for the title.

“I nearly died once, you know.” They are in bed together, sticky and sweaty and replete, their bare skin cooling in the aftermath of pleasure. To other people, this would seem perhaps an odd moment for Thomas to choose such a somber topic. But not to James. James is muzzy-headed with the joy his body is still, miraculously, capable of experiencing, the joy of Thomas there to once again be its cause. He is hardly likely to stop the man sharing whatever he wants to share, given that he is alive— _alive!_ —to share anything with James at all.

He wraps his arms more tightly around Thomas’s solid torso and offers up _Did you now?_ , ready to hear all the stories Thomas wants to tell, be they never so unpleasant.

“I did,” Thomas answers, and shuffles to accommodate James’s limpet grasp. He, too, has seemed loathe to be physically separate from James since their reunion, and now he strokes one calloused hand aimlessly along James’s back as he goes on. “Well, truth be told, there were several incidents since we’ve been parted, but I don’t want to speak of those tonight.”

“Speak of anything you like,” James says. He rubs his cheek against the skin beneath it, relishing warmth and firm pectoral muscle. Perhaps he should be chagrined at this reference to Thomas’s difficulties in their years apart, but that can come later. Right now, he floats in blissful fatigue. James is, to put it plainly, well fucked, and pleased about the fact.

Thomas’s chuckle ripples through his body into James’s, and he says, “Ah, a critical audience, I see.”

James lifts his head to look in Thomas’s eye. “You are alive and here for me to be your audience. I see no reason for criticism in that.”

Thomas grins at him. His eyes crinkle where the sun has baked his skin, and what James feels at it can best be described as lovesickness. He must kiss Thomas, and he does so, reveling still, barely a month reunited, in the scrape of beard against beard that is new for them.

They kiss for some moments before Thomas pulls back gently. “Much as I’d like to kiss you until my body can rouse itself to more again, I do, in fact, have a reason for the story I want to tell you.” James subsides to rest his chin on Thomas's chest once more, watching his beloved face.

“You’d best continue your oration, then,” James says, “for I’d like it to be over and done by the time your body can rouse itself again.” He feels his mouth curve into a one-sided smile, then deepens it as he recalls how that very smile used to make Thomas melt to his whim. “I have plans for you yet this night.”

“Lord above,” Thomas swears as his eyes drop to James’s mouth. “I’d forgot that damned smirk. Put your head down again. I can’t think with you looking like that.”

James complies, kissing Thomas’s breast before turning his cheek to lay upon it once more.

“Right,” Thomas says, “where was I?”

“You were stroking my back and about to tell me how you once almost died,” James says helpfully.

“Yes.” Thomas takes up his caresses again, and James hums at the feel of Thomas’s hands—his Thomas—on his skin again. He has passed years parched for lack of this specific touch, and he’ll be content now to spend forever soaking it back in. Thomas unspools his tale. “I came off my horse as a boy. He leapt over a log, then pulled up short, while I kept going right over his head and fell on mine. The world went black for me, but I was told afterwards that it looked like I’d snapped my neck right there. I hadn’t, of course, but I was insensible for days. The doctor had to spoon broth into me and massage my throat to make me swallow it. It still bewilders me that I awoke at all, to hear the story told, but awake I did, and my mother was there to cry over me and tell me how she’d worried.”

“Poor wee lad,” James inserts. “Poor woman.”

“Quite,” Thomas says. “She was an unconventional mother who spent quite a bit of time with me. I was something of a favourite of hers, though not as a pet. She took me with her round the estate, teaching me and speaking with me about anything under the sun that caught my interest. I can’t recall many details about her, but I do remember how earnestly she listened when I’m sure I was doing little more than babbling about the stable cats and how much I liked sweets.” He pauses in both narration and his stroking of James’s back. “I cried for days when she died.”

James hugs Thomas tightly. “She sounds remarkable,” he offers.

“She was,” Thomas replies, and takes up his stroking again. “I’m sorry you never met. She was by far the better of my parents.” And before James can be distracted by a resurgence of guilt thinking about Thomas’s other parent, Thomas continues. “I say all this to give you some sense of how overwrought she seemed when I woke in my bed after the accident. She said no one had been able to rouse me in days and she’d feared me beyond saving. She held me and told me I was her miracle darling, back from the dead. Those were her exact words, the only words of hers I can remember verbatim.”

James can imagine Thomas’s poor, frightened mother. Can sketch a picture in his mind of a small, tow-headed Thomas, still and pale in his nursery bed. Can only begin to–

“James,” Thomas interrupts his revery with a surprising urgency. He cups the back of James’s neck with one hand and nudges him to lift his head. Oh, look at Thomas’s earnest face. “James,” he repeats, low and fervent, “I tell you all this not to upset you. I mean to say that– You should know that I– Dammit!”

If ever James needed a reminder that things have changed for both of them, it is here, seeing Thomas like this, lost for the words to express an idea. “It’s all right,” he says, unsure. “Whatever you want to tell me, I’ll listen. It needn’t all come out at once if you don’t–” and Thomas cuts him off with,

"It’s you, now. You are my miracle darling, back from the dead.”

Perhaps having Thomas returned to him broke something in James. He once prided himself on his inscrutability, but that James must have disappeared a month ago. Any trace of any mask he ever wore is gone, trampled into the soil of a Savannah field. Since then, he has felt every emotion floating at the very surface of him, unwilling to be tamped down or snuffed, and this moment is no exception. He is undone at Thomas’s words, tears welling then slipping down his cheeks. He hardly knows whether he is happy or sad, relieved or distraught, only that he _loves_. He surges up to kiss Thomas fiercely, holding his face in his hands and crying and murmuring into Thomas’s mouth _And you are mine_ , and then, over and over, _My miracle darling_.

Thomas holds his face in return, and they kiss and cry together until they begin to laugh. The two of them: worn, damaged, tormented, and so unbelievably lucky, gifted this second chance at life. Miraculous indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to squeal about how this fic is entirely canon-compliant, feel free to come find me at [Tumblr](http://fand0mfan.tumblr.com).


End file.
